Laments for a dying language”:Coin brassy words at will, debase the coinage;We’re in an if-you-cannot-lick-them-join age, A slovenliness-provides-its-own-excuse age, Where usage overnight condones misusage. Farewell, farewell to my beloved language,Once English, now a vile orangutanguage.

Now we have come full circle to the subtitle of this book: children learn by unlearning other languages. Viewed in the Darwinian light, all humanly possible grammars compete to match the language spoken in the...

Universal grammar is about what language is: it is to be distinguished from prescriptive grammars, often distilled in newspaper columns, which tell us what language should be. We are all entitled to our own opinions...

So is language change progress or degeneration? It is neither, of course. To assert that language change is for the better or worse requires some measure of what “good” or “bad” language is, and the...

Chromosomes. Sex. Grasshoppers. “Pick me up, Mommy.”This is an odd list, except in the eye of evolution. For in the major developments in the history of life, the ability to say, “Pick me up, Mommy”...

Language is what we use to tell stories, transmit knowledge, and build social bonds. It comforts, tickles, excites, and destroys. Every society has language, and somehow we all learn a language in the first few...

Language guardians have often blamed linguists as defenders of bad language: moral and cultural relativism is often tossed in at no extra charge. We as a profession are supposedly promoting the idea that anything goes...

The true structure of the Welsh grammar will be revealed only when we look at sentences slightly more complicated than its basic VSO pattern. Welsh is no different from the rest of the world: it...